Wheelchairs are, of course, widely used to provide a mode of transportation for persons whose ability to walk is limited. Such wheelchairs must, of course, be sturdy and reliable and therefore can be fairly costly.
Different limitations may, however, require different configurations for different users. Further, wheelchairs are often used by many different people over the useful life of the wheelchair (e.g., where a person is only temporarily handicapped, by a broken leg, for example, they will rent a chair until the leg is healed and then return it to be used by someone else who may have a different condition). Therefore, it is economically desirable to construct wheelchairs which can be used by the most people given the unreasonable cost of manufacturing each wheelchair for a particular individual's requirements, particularly since those requirements may exist for only a limited time period. A medical supply company will not want to stock an expensive wheelchair which, due to a special configuration useful to only a few people, will often sit unused (and unrented) in their stock of equipment.
As a result of the above, most wheelchairs have a standard configuration providing a seat with an upright back and foot rests supported at the front of the seat, where the foot rests may be adjusted to allow a user to sit in a substantially normal seated position with their feet on the foot rests, and the foot rests may also be pivoted up to alternatively allow the user's feet to be elevated straight out in front of them up to about the height of the seat. Side arms are also typically provided on opposite sides of the seat of standard wheelchairs, for stability in holding the user in the chair and also to protect the user from getting caught up in the wheels.
Unfortunately, there are people who have wheelchair requirements which are not met by such standard wheelchairs. Persons having those requirements may often be faced with the untenable choice of having no chair and therefore being unable to move around, or of attempting to squeeze or twist their body in order to use an inadequate standard configuration chair, or of finding a wheelchair specially made for their condition. Such specially made wheelchairs can be very expensive, unreasonably so where the user needs it only for a short period of time due to a temporary condition.
The present invention is directed toward overcoming one or more of the problems set forth above.